Introducing Mini Maxwell
26 Jun 2011maxwell
robots
ros
While I am a strong proponent of low-cost, human-scale mobile
manipulators, I also realize it's impractical for everyone to be playing with such large robots.
Earlier this year I designed a small robot using an iRobot Create, some custom ABS, a Kinect, and an
AX-12 based arm and neck. This small mobile manipulation platform had no name for some time, but every
time I showed it to people they exclaimed "Oh! A mini version of Maxwell!". And so, this robot got the
name "Mini Maxwell".![](/assets/images/2011-06-26-mini_max_side.png)
There are now about half a dozen Mini Maxes running around across the United States. As our software development is starting to calm down, I thought I would take a moment to showcase a few of the robot's features.
As you probably have guessed, this robot runs ROS (on a netbook). We're using an ArbotiX to control the arm and neck servos (7 AX-12s total), while the Create base connects directly to the netbook. Two demo buttons are attached through the ArbotiX allowing users to quickly add user input to programs.
![](/assets/images/2011-06-26-mini_max_rear.png)
The arm has 4 degrees of freedom, losing the wrist roll found in Maxwell. A single servo gripper is installed, although a more sophisticated one is in the works:
![](/assets/images/2011-06-26-mini_max_arm.png)
I demoed Mini Max earlier this week at the HBRC meeting, showing how we can easily move around toy blocks. I've posted a number of tutorials and other documentation on the ROS wiki as well.